Download More ebooks [PDF]. Format PDF ebook download PDF KINDLE.

Full download textbook at textbookfull.com

Phoenix Leadership for Business: An

Executive’s Strategy for Relevance and
Resilience Valentina Gokenbach
For dowload this book click BUTTON or LINK below

https://textbookfull.com/product/phoenix-
leadership-for-business-an-executives-strategy-
for-relevance-and-resilience-valentina-gokenbach/
OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebooks from https://textbookfull.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Phoenix leadership for business: an executive's

strategy for relevance and resilience 1 edition Edition
Gokenbach

https://textbookfull.com/product/phoenix-leadership-for-business-
an-executives-strategy-for-relevance-and-resilience-1-edition-
edition-gokenbach/

In Command of Guardians: Executive Servant Leadership

for the Community of Responders Eric J. Russell

https://textbookfull.com/product/in-command-of-guardians-
executive-servant-leadership-for-the-community-of-responders-
eric-j-russell/

An Interdisciplinary Approach for Disaster Resilience

and Sustainability Indrajit Pal

https://textbookfull.com/product/an-interdisciplinary-approach-
for-disaster-resilience-and-sustainability-indrajit-pal/

Caring and Sharing: The Cultural Heritage Environment

as an Agent for Change Valentina Vasile

https://textbookfull.com/product/caring-and-sharing-the-cultural-
heritage-environment-as-an-agent-for-change-valentina-vasile/
Borderless Leadership: Global Skills for Personal and
Business Success Zlatica Kraljevic

https://textbookfull.com/product/borderless-leadership-global-
skills-for-personal-and-business-success-zlatica-kraljevic/

Pro Apache Phoenix: An SQL Driver for HBase 1st Edition

Shakil Akhtar

https://textbookfull.com/product/pro-apache-phoenix-an-sql-
driver-for-hbase-1st-edition-shakil-akhtar/

Timeless Leadership Truths-The Origins and Applications

of Business Strategy 1st Edition Norton Paley (Author)

https://textbookfull.com/product/timeless-leadership-truths-the-
origins-and-applications-of-business-strategy-1st-edition-norton-
paley-author/

The Search for Ethics in Leadership, Business, and

Beyond Joanne B. Ciulla

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-search-for-ethics-in-
leadership-business-and-beyond-joanne-b-ciulla/

Resilience for all Barbara Wilson

https://textbookfull.com/product/resilience-for-all-barbara-
wilson/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Voyages to
the Moon and the Sun
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

Author: Cyrano de Bergerac

Translator: Richard Aldington

Release date: July 10, 2024 [eBook #74000]

Language: English

Original publication: London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd,

1923

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book
was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOYAGES TO THE

MOON AND THE SUN ***
VOYAGES TO THE MOON AND
THE SUN

By CYRANO DE BERGERAC

Translated by
RICHARD ALDINGTON

With an Introduction and Notes

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET,
EDINBURGH

Broadway Translations
 "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety."

À Frédéric Lachèvre

TÉMOINAGE D'ADMIRATION ET DE RECONNAISSANCE

 CONTENTS
Introduction
The Legend of Cyrano
The Life of Cyrano
Cyrano's Friends
The Libertin Question
The Works of Cyrano

Voyage to the Moon

Voyage to the Sun

Appendices
Extracts from Godwin, D'Urfey, and Swift
Bibliography
Genealogy
Coat of Arms

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Cyrano
Signature of Cyrano
Title-page to Lovell's Translation
Cyrano's First Attempt
Frontispiece to Lovell's Translation
Cyrano's Flight to the Sun
The Parliament of Birds
Gonzales' Voyage to the Moon
Cyrano's Coat of Arms

CYRANO DE BERGERAC
 I
THE LEGEND OF CYRANO
The legend of Cyrano de Bergerac began, one might say, during his
life; but it was strongly founded by his friend Henry Le Bret who
edited The Voyage to the Moon with an introduction, in 1657, two
years after Cyrano's death. The 'Préface' of Le Bret is one of the
chief sources of information about Cyrano. It is no discredit to Le
Bret that he drew as favourable a portrait of his friend as he could,
but we cannot accept literally everything he says and we are forced
to read between the lines of his panegyric. Le Bret is largely
responsible for the moral legend of Cyrano. He says:
"In fine, Reader, he always passed for a man of singular rare wit; to
which he added such good fortune on the side of the senses that he
always controlled them as he willed; in so much that he rarely drank
wine because (said he) excess of drink brutalizes, and as much care
is needed with it as with arsenic (with this he was wont to compare
it) for everything is to be feared from this poison, whatever care is
used; even if nothing were to be dreaded but what the vulgar call
qui pro quo, which makes it always dangerous. He was no less
moderate in his eating, from which he banished ragoûts as much as
he could in the belief that the simplest and least complicated living is
the best; which he supported by the example of modern men, who
live so short a time compared with those of the earliest ages, who
appear to have lived so long because of the simplicity of their food.
"He added to these two qualities so great a restraint towards the fair
sex that it may be said he never departed from the respect owed it
by ours; and with all this he had so great an aversion from self-
interest that he could never imagine what it was to possess private
property, his own belonging less to him than to such of his
acquaintance as needed it. And so Heaven, which is not unmindful,
willed that among the large number of friends he had during his life
some should love him until death and a few even beyond death."[1]
It will be seen later that many of these virtues were probably
necessities arising from an unheroic cause; but this moral character
given by Le Bret was very useful to the 19th-century builders of the
Cyrano legend.
Other 17th-century writers give a very different impression of Cyrano
de Bergerac: where Le Bret saw a noble, almost austere genius, they
went to the opposite extreme and saw a madman. An anecdote in
the Historiettes of Tallemant des Réaux gives us another Cyrano:
"A madman named Cyrano wrote a play called The Death of
Agrippina where Sejanus says horrible things against the Gods. The
play was pure balderdash (un vray galimathias).[2] Sercy, who
published it, told Boisrobert that he sold out the edition in a
twinkling. 'You surprise me', said Boisrobert. 'Ah, Monsieur', replied
the bookseller, 'it has such splendid impieties'."[3]
The implication that the success of the play was due to its
"impieties" is repeated in an anecdote of the Menagiana quoted by
Lacroix, to the following effect: When the pious people heard there
were impieties in The Death of Agrippina, they went prepared to hiss
it; they passed over in silence all the tirades against the Gods which
had caused the rumour, but when Sejanus said:
"Frappons, voilà l'hostie",[4]
they interrupted the actor with whistling, booing and shouts of:
"Ah! the rascal! Ah! The atheist! Hear how he speaks of the holy
sacrament!"
I cannot find this anecdote in my own copy of the Menagiana, but
since my edition is 1693 and Lacroix quotes that of 1715, I presume
his is an addition. In my edition I find another anecdote of Cyrano
which I give here both for its rarity and because it shows 17th-
century contempt for Cyrano at its most virulent:
"What wretched works are those of Cyrano de Bergerac! He studied
at the Collège de Beauvais in the time of Principal Grangier. They say
he was still in his 'rhetoric' when he wrote The Pedant Outwitted
against his head-master. There are a few passable things in this play
but all the rest is very flat. When he wrote his Voyage to the Moon I
think he had one quarter of the moon in his head. The first public
sign he gave of his madness was to go to mass in the morning in
trunk hose and a night cap without his doublet. He had not one sou
when he fell ill of the disease from which he died and if M. de
Sainte-Marthe had not charitably supplied all his necessities he
would have died in the poor-house."[5]
More 17th-century anecdotes of Cyrano will be found in the Life;
those cited will at least show the early tendency to attach anecdotes
to him and the curious conflict of contemporary opinion. During the
second half of the 17th century Cyrano remained popular and his
works were frequently reprinted. The 18th century saw a great
decline in reputation and in editions; Voltaire repeated the
accusation: "A madman!" No edition of Cyrano's works appeared in
Paris between 1699 and 1855: the last of them before the revival of
the 19th century was the Amsterdam edition of 1761. For a century
there was no edition of Cyrano. He dropped out of sight almost
entirely; but in the 19th century he was destined to be revived as an
increasingly legendary figure, culminating in the heroic apotheosis of
Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.
Strangely enough the revival began in England in 1820 with an
article in the Retrospective Review.[6] This article shows some
acquaintance with Cyrano's originals as well as with the translation
reviewed. The anonymous writer says:
"Cyrano de Bergerac is a marvellously strange writer—his character,
too, was out of the common way. His chief passion appears to have
been duelling; and, from the numerous affairs of honour in which he
was concerned in a very short life and the bravery he displayed on
those occasions, he acquired the cognomen of 'The Intrepid'. His
friend Le Bret says he was engaged in no less than one hundred
duels for his friends, and not one on his own account. Others
however say, that, happening to have a nose somewhat awry,
whoever was so unfortunate or so rash as to laugh at it, was sure to
be called upon to answer its intrepid owner in the field. But however
this may be, it is indisputable that Cyrano was a distinguished
monomachist and a most eccentric writer."[7]
Seventeen years later that amiable man of letters, Charles Nodier,
resuscitated Cyrano in his Bonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de
Bergerac. Before this Nodier had incidentally defended Cyrano in his
Bibliographie des Fous:
"As to this book (The Voyage to the Moon), which he wrote when he
was already mad (according to Voltaire), would you not be
astonished if you were told that it contained more profound
perceptions, more ingenious foresight, more anticipations in that
science whose confused elements Descartes scarcely sorted out,
than the large volume written by Voltaire under the supervision of
the Marquis du Châtelet? Cyrano used his genius like a hot-head, but
there is nothing in it which resembles a madman."[8]
Nodier is responsible for that portion of the Cyrano legend which
makes him an innovator, plagiarized from, and persecuted to an
early grave.
"It seems that a man who opened up so many paths to talent and
who went so far in all the paths he opened, ought to have left a
name in any literature....
"There was once a wooden horse which bore in its flanks all the
conquerors of Ilion, yet had no part in the triumph. This begins like
a fairy-tale ... and yet it is true.
"Poor wooden horse! Poor Cyrano!"[9]
But, if Charles Nodier carried on the legend, he did little more than
open the way for Theophile Gautier, whose famous Grotesque is
filled with every conceivable error of fact and yet is obviously one of
Rostand's chief sources. Les Grotesques appeared in 1844 and
contained ten pseudo-biographical sketches of "romantic"
personalities in French literature chiefly of the 17th century. The
book itself is an interesting by-product of the romantic movement,
but here we are only concerned with the sixth sketch, Cyrano de
Bergerac. This opens with a fantastic divagation upon noses,
perhaps the most exaggerated development of the legendary
Cyranesque appendage. If the reader will examine Cyrano's
portraits, without prejudice and with particular attention to the nose,
he will scarcely be prepared for this outburst:
"This incredible nose is settled in a three-quarter face [portrait], the
smaller side of which it covers entirely; it forms in the middle a
mountain which in my opinion must be the highest mountain in the
world after the Himalayas; then it descends rapidly towards the
mouth, which it largely obumbrates, like a tapir's snout or the
rostrum of a bird of prey; at the extremity it is divided by a line very
similar to, though more pronounced than, the furrow which cuts the
cherry lip of Anne of Austria, the white queen with the long ivory
hands. This makes two distinct noses in one face, which is more
than custom allows, ... the portraits of Saint Vincent de Paul and the
deacon Paris will show you the best characterized types of this sort
of structure; but Cyrano's nose is less doughy, less puffy in contour;
it has more bones and cartilage, more flats and high-lights, it is
more heroic."
 Cyrano de Bergerac.

We then learn that Cyrano was a wonderful duellist, that he

revenged any insult to his nose with a challenge; after more
disquisition on noses we read that Cyrano was "born in 1620, in the
castle of Bergerac, in Périgord"[10], that he was unable to endure
the pedantry of his schoolmaster and so that good country
gentleman, his father, allowed him to go to Paris, where at eighteen
he threw himself into fashionable life with the greatest success.
Then comes a highly-coloured picture of the contrast between life in
Paris in 1638 and the Bergerac family in their "tranquil and discreet
house, sober and cold, well ordered and silent, almost always half-
asleep in the shadow of its pallid walnut trees between the church
and the cemetery." This is followed by a defence of Cyrano against
the charge of atheism with a quotation from The Death of Agrippina.
Next we hear that this Gascon gentleman joined the Gascon
company of guards with Le Bret and of his numerous prowesses with
the sword, and this slides into a description of Cyrano's early
slashing style, with quotations from The Pedant Outwitted and the
story of the actor whom Cyrano forbade to play. This is followed by
several pages of excited panegyric, paraphrased from Le Bret; we
get Cyrano's wounds, his love of study, his disinterestedness, his
love of freedom and scorn of serving les grands, his subsequent
service with the duc d'Arpajon, the falling timber on his head and his
death; then we hear of his simple habits, his brilliant friendships and
his study under Gassendi. The essay ends with several pages,
dealing with Molière's famous plagiarism from The Pedant Outwitted
and containing a most exaggerated account of Cyrano's writings,
extremely loose in expression, showing that Gautier can have had
but a superficial acquaintance with Cyrano's books.
If this essay of Gautier's were meant as biography and criticism, one
can only say that it is likely to be misleading; if as fiction, that the
form is not well chosen. Nevertheless, this and Nodier's article
stimulated curiosity in Cyrano sufficiently to cause his works to be
reprinted in 1855. Lacroix in 1858 issued another edition and wrote
an enthusiastic preface (from the point of view of an ardent free-
thinker), making Cyrano a great predecessor of the 18th-century
philosophes and adding more legend.
After this, the legend of Cyrano smouldered for some forty years and
then broke out in a final conflagration in 1897, with Edmond
Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Everything picturesque which fancy
and rumour had attached to the name of Cyrano during the
centuries was taken up by Rostand, exaggerated, idealised almost to
infinity—and the world believed, and doubtless still believes, that this
is the "real" Cyrano de Bergerac. Strangely, Rostand apparently
shared this illusion; for a French savant, M. Emile Magne, wrote a
pamphlet pointing out some of Rostand's worst errors, and Rostand
replied with a letter, claiming that his play was historically correct.
Rostand's play is a pleasing, if belated, specimen of the French
romantic drama; its dramatic quality is undeniable, its appeal to the
sentiments irresistible, its verse skilfully handled; it is
characteristically, delightfully, absurdly French; it deserved its
popularity. A man who cannot enjoy Rostand's Cyrano has taste too
fastidious for his own good. But when he has watched the heroic
lover of Roxanne fight his duels to the accompaniment of a ballade,
promenade his huge nose about the stage, exhibit the remarkable
delicacy of his sentiments and finally die a Gascon death—"mon
Panache!"—this imaginary spectator must not tell us that this is "the
real" Cyrano de Bergerac. It is an amusing Cyrano one would prefer
not to lose; but Rostand's invention has nothing to do with the man
who wrote the tragedy of The Death of Agrippina and The Voyages
to the Sun and Moon; this is not the young man who enlisted in M.
de Casteljaloux's company of guards; this is not the follower of
Gassendi and Rohault; and this delicate lover is—alas!—not that
Savinien de Cyrano, self-styled de Bergerac, who died miserably in
the prime of his age not so much from the effects of the falling piece
of timber as probably of venereal disease.
 II
THE LIFE OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC
The family of Cyrano was not Gascon and was not noble. The first
Cyrano of whom anything was known in France is Savinien I de
Cyrano, of Sardinian origin, bourgeois of Paris and a merchant of
fish. Doubtless the prejudice of noble birth is antiquated, yet when
one has been brought up on Rostand's Cyrano the discovery is a
shock, rather like finding that Sir Philip Sidney's grandfather was a
London fishmonger. But this is only the first of the disagreeable
surprises modern investigators prepare for us.
This Savinien, grandfather of the poet, became notary and
'secrétaire du Roy' in 1571. He was wealthy, he owned a large house
in the rue des Prouvaires, various annuities, the fiefs of
Boiboisseaux, Mauvières, and Bergerac, the last two bought in 1582.
These purchases represent a familiar scene in the eternal social
comedy of the rise and fall of families; the genuine old de Bergerac
family had disappeared but their memory lingered on and no
member of the Cyrano family ventured to call himself de Bergerac at
Bergerac. Indeed the poet was the only member of the family who
used the name either during the fifty-four years they possessed the
fief or afterwards. In any case this Bergerac is not the Dordogne or
Gascon Bergerac but a little estate not very far from Paris in the
modern department of Seine et Oise.[11] So much for the noble
Gascon of Gautier and Rostand.
This Savinien I de Cyrano married Anne Le Maire; their eldest son,
Abel I de Cyrano, 'avocat au Parlement de Paris,' married Espérance
Bellenger on the third of September 1612.[12] An inventory of their
goods shows that Cyrano's father was an educated man who read
Greek, Latin, and Italian. Abel de Cyrano had six children; the eldest
surviving son was Savinien II, the poet, baptised on the sixth of
March 1619 in Paris.
In 1622 Abel de Cyrano left Paris for his house at Mauvières, where
young Savinien de Cyrano remained "until he was old enough to
read". He was then sent to a small private school kept by a country
parson, where he met his lifelong friend and posthumous panegyrist,
Henry Le Bret. Savinien did not like his tutor; and this is not the first
or the last time in history when there has existed a mutual hatred
between a pert boy of talent and some plodding pedagogue. The
boy complained so continually to his father that he was taken away
from the parson and sent to the Collège de Beauvais in Paris.
These meagre details are all we know positively of Cyrano's
childhood except that his godmother left him six hundred livres in
1628. How much of the rebelliousness of his temper in later years
was due to hatred of this pedagogical parson is a matter of pure
conjecture, but Cyrano's dislike of pedants and priests might
plausibly be attributed at least in part to this man's clumsy usage.
We may also surmise that access to his father's extensive library
gave him that precocity for which he was remarkable, and that the
years of childhood spent at Mauvières created in him a genuine love
of nature. Numerous passages might be quoted from his writings to
show that he really liked out-of-doors life, enjoyed the beauty of the
country, and felt that kinship with wild living things—animals, birds,
plants—which is supposed to be a wholly modern sentiment. This
sentiment may be seen in the Letters, expressed with a good deal of
affectation; but unmistakably in those pages of The Voyage to the
Sun which describe the talking birds and trees.
The head-master of Beauvais was at that time Jean Grangier,
described by some as an excellent pedagogue, by others as brutal,
superstitious, violent, and vicious. Apparently he was one of those
pedagogues who, in Ben Jonson's words, "swept their livings from
the posteriors of little children"; and therefore was very unpopular
with Cyrano, who made him the hero of The Pedant Outwitted.
Flogging will always drive a sensitive and high-spirited boy to revolt;
and when we find a truculent and sometimes offensive mood of
revolt a main feature of Cyrano's work, we should remember before
condemning him that a large portion of his childhood was passed
under the birch of two bigoted pedants.
Cyrano left Beauvais in 1637, when he was eighteen. In the
preceding year Abel de Cyrano had sold the fiefs of Mauvières, and
Bergerac and had returned to Paris. This sale of land only fifty-four
years after the purchase by the first Savinien de Cyrano shows how
rapidly the affairs of the family declined financially. It would be
interesting to know more of Cyrano's life in the period between his
leaving school and joining the guards. Le Bret tells us that "at the
age when nature is most easily corrupted", and when Cyrano "had
liberty to do as he chose", he (Le Bret) stopped him "on a dangerous
incline". It will easily be conjectured that the change from a flogging
school to complete liberty in the Paris of 1637 would not incline a
precocious youth to the monastic virtues. Many fantastic pictures of
Paris under Louis XIII have been drawn by novelists and essayists;
whether it were quite as picturesque as they make out may be
doubted, but that its taverns were filled with riot, excitement and
debauch is certain; and Cyrano frequented the taverns. The famous
Pomme de Pin, the Croix de Lorraine, the Boisselière, the Pressoir
d'Or, and a dozen other taverns were crowded with heterogeneous
sets of courtiers, gentlemen, gossips, poets, atheists, duellists,
rogues of all sorts, talking, laughing, drinking, writing, whoring,
gambling and brawling. From Gaston d'Orléans, the King's brother,
downwards, the greater part of the nobility, gentry and the learned
at some time of their lives frequented these commodious taverns,
rubbed shoulders with knaves and bawds and poets and held high
carouse.

"Mordieu! comme il pleut là dehors!

Faisons pleuvoir dans nostre corps
Du vin, tu l'entens sans le dire,
Et c'est là le vray mot pour rire;
Chantons, rions, menons du bruit,
 Beuvons ici toute la nuit,
Tant que demain la belle Aurore
Nous trouve tous à table encore."[13]

Into that society of revellers, unscrupulous, heedless, coarse,

irreligious, but brave, witty, chivalrous, talented and merry, came a
young man of eighteen, the owner of a curious nose "shaped like a
parrot's beak", talented, witty and brave himself, already a brilliant
swordsman, scatter-brained, vain with all the vanity of young men in
Latin countries, eager for knowledge but filled with hatred for the
theology and pedantry of his early masters. Imagine the London of
James the First's reign so vividly and delightfully sketched in The
Fortunes of Nigel, adding to it that freedom of speech, morals and
speculation which Scott largely left out; transfer it to the turbulent
Paris of 1637 and throw into that milieu not a sober Scotch laird, but
a hot-headed young Frenchman. Is it not almost hypocritical to
expect that he would do anything different from what he apparently
did do: Drink, gamble, blaspheme, whore, talk atheism, play mad
pranks and slit men's throats in duels?
From this wild cabaret life Cyrano was rescued by Le Bret just about
the time when Abel de Cyrano threatened seriously to cut off
supplies. At nineteen Cyrano entered the company of guards
commanded by the "triple Gascon", M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux.
Cyrano de Bergerac was a good soldier, but that does not mean he
was free from the ordinary vices of soldiers. If the "dangerous
incline" from which Le Bret rescued his friend was gambling, he
chose a curious remedy; for gambling is inevitably one means of
dispelling the crushing ennui of military life. Another, almost
universal, military amusement is drinking; one would not expect to
find teetotallers among the Gascon guard. It seems probable that
the "dangerous incline" was atheism or a serious love affair; for the
military life is dulling to the affections and fatal to thought. Certainly,
the mess and guard-room of M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux's
company would not greatly differ from a noisy cabaret. One hardly
sees what moral advantages were gained by the change, except that
military discipline and comradeship probably steadied Cyrano if they
failed to correct the extravagance of his character and behaviour.
Casteljaloux's company consisted almost entirely of Gascons, and
this fact has helped to propagate the myth of Cyrano's noble birth;
and doubtless he assumed the Gascon-sounding name of de
Bergerac to increase the illusion. But he must have possessed some
other merit than that of an assumed name to enable him to enter
the guards; this was of course his swordsmanship.
Duelling in France in the first half of the 17th century was more than
a fashionable mania, it was a real danger to the state. The fashion
was at its height in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII. During
eight years of the former reign no less than two thousand gentlemen
lost their lives in duels. Even the great Cardinal Richelieu only
succeeded in diminishing, not in crushing the habit. The duelling in
Rostand's Cyrano is the most accurate part of the play; indeed it
would be difficult to exaggerate the fantastic nature of these duels.
Men fought for the merest trifles; not so much for honour as for the
love of fighting, of prestige and notoriety. Successful duelling was
then a sure means to those commonly desired ends. The thirst for
"monomachy" was so ardent that the seconds were not content to
regulate the combat but must needs take part in it; so that a girl's
ribbon might be the pretext for six men to pull out their rapiers in
mortal combat, with the result perhaps of several wounds and more
than one death. Cyrano de Bergerac was a brilliant swordsman, a
talent which gave him a position comparable to that of an aeroplane
"ace" during the European war. The stories told of his duelling sound
fabulous and are probably exaggerated, but certainly have a
foundation in fact. Le Bret tells us:
"Duels, which at that time seemed the unique and most rapid means
of becoming known, in a few days rendered him so famous that the
Gascons, who composed nearly the whole company, considered him
the demon of courage and credited him with as many duels as he
had been with them days."
The most remarkable thing about these duels, and a point very
much in Cyrano's favour, was that he fought over a hundred as
second to other men and not on his own account. He was no
Bobadil. Brun tries to argue that Cyrano must have fought on his
own account, but even M. Lachèvre, who is hostile to Cyrano, denies
it. Moreover, we have Cyrano's own declaration: "I have been
everybody's second."
Casteljaloux's company was ordered for active service in 1639. The
company was besieged in Mouzon by the Croats of the Imperial
Army. Cyrano has described part of the siege in the twenty-fourth of
his Lettres Diverses. The garrison was short of provisions and during
one of the numerous sorties Cyrano was shot through the body. He
had not recovered when the garrison was relieved by Chatillon on
the twenty-first of June 1639. Next year Cyrano was again on active
service. He was wounded a second time by a sword-thrust in the
throat at the siege of Arras, sometime before the ninth of August
1640. He had served this campaign in Conti's gendarmes.
Two severe wounds in fourteen months are "cooling cards" even to a
pseudo-Gascon. Cyrano determined to retire from the service.
"The hardships he suffered during these two sieges," says Le Bret,
"the inconveniences resulting from two severe wounds, the frequent
duels forced upon him by his reputation for courage and skill, which
compelled him to act as second more than one hundred times (for
he never had a quarrel on his own account), the small hope he had
of preferment, from the lack of a patron, to whom his free genius
was incapable of submitting, and finally his great love of learning,
caused him to renounce the occupation of war which demands
everything of a man and makes him as much an enemy of literature
as literature makes him a lover of peace."
Cyrano, then, returned to his studies. Hitherto he had been
unfortunate in his instructors, but he now made the acquaintance of
several scholars and men of letters who had a strong influence on
him, whose ideas he adopted and copied in his works. The
celebrated Gassendi, who revived the philosophy of Epicurus and
opposed both the Aristotelians and Descartes, came to Paris and
lectured to a small number of selected students. Niceron makes the
unlikely assertion that Cyrano forced his way into this learned society
at the sword's point. It is certain that Cyrano sat at Gassendi's feet
and picked up from his lectures those fragments of Epicurean
physics he afterwards scattered through his works. There most
probably he met Molière, Rohault, Bernier, Chapelle and the younger
La Mothe Le Vayer. Cyrano was therefore a member of a
distinguished literary group which contained one eminent
philosopher and a dramatist of supreme genius.
Philosophy and the society of men of letters did not cause Cyrano to
abandon his sword. Two documents are extant, dated October 1641,
showing Cyrano's arrangements to take lessons in dancing and
fencing. It is in these years 1641-43 that he began seriously to write
and at the same time performed his most famous feats with the
sword.
The battle of the Porte de Nesle, more authentic and even more
heroic than the feats of Horatius celebrated by Lord Macaulay, has
been related by every writer on Cyrano, from Le Bret to Rostand,
from Gautier to M. Emile Magne. What happened, as far as one can
make out, was this. A friend of Cyrano's, the Chevalier de Lignières,
had been rash enough to banter the conjugal infelicities of a great
lord who, sensible of the affront to his person and rank, hired a set
of fellows to fall upon Lignières and to crop his ears in the public
highway. Lignières heard of this, took refuge with Cyrano and
remained with him until night, when they set out together for
Lignières's home with Cyrano as escort and two officers of Conti's
regiment as witnesses, in the rear. At the Porte de Nesle the bravi
were ambushed to catch Lignières on his way to the Faubourg Saint-
Germain; Le Bret says there were a hundred of them. In any event
there was a crowd. Incredible as it seems, the fact is well attested
that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed, killed two, wounded
seven and put the rest to flight.[14]
The battle of Brioché's monkey is less creditable to Cyrano and far
less authentic. The evidence is the unreliable one of an anonymous
work, Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le Singe de Brioché, au
Bout du Pont-Neuf, almost certainly written by Dassoucy, a friend
with whom Cyrano had quarrelled. Dassoucy fled to Italy when the
pamphlet was published. The gist of the pamphlet is as follows:
One Brioché exhibited a marionette show near one end of the Pont-
Neuf. Among the troup was a live monkey.
Cyrano came along, and some thirty or forty lackeys, waiting for the
puppet show, began to hustle him and to make fun of his singular
appearance; one of them actually flipped him on the end of his nose.
Out came that deadly rapier in a flash, and the intrepid little "fiery
whoreson," rushed at them, driving the whole mob of them before
him. Brioché's monkey, "making a leg" for a sou, got in Cyrano's way
and the gallant swordsman, not unnaturally mistaking it for one of
the rabble, pierced it effectually with his rapier. Brioché brought an
action against Cyrano to recover fifty pistoles damages.
"Bergerac defended himself like Bergerac, that is, with facetious
writings and grotesque jokes. He told the judge he would pay
Brioché like a poet, or 'with monkey's money' (i.e. laugh at him);
that coins were an article of furniture unknown to Phœbus. He
vowed he would immortalise the dead beast in an Apollonian
epitaph."
It is possible that Dassoucy was merely parodying the battle of the
Porte de Nesle; none of the facetious writings referred to is extant;
but they may have perished with the elegy Le Bret saw Cyrano
writing in the guard-room and the Story of the Spark and Cyrano's
Lyric Poems.
The third anecdote attached to this period relates to the actor
Mondory or Montfleury, the latter of whom is satirised in Cyrano's
letter Against a Fat Man. The 1695 edition of the Menagiana gives
the story as follows:
"Bergerac was a great sword-clanker. His nose, which was very ugly,
was the cause of his killing at least ten people. He quarrelled with
Montdory, the comedian, and strictly forbade him to appear on the
stage. 'I forbid you to appear for a month', said he. Two days later
Bergerac was at the play. Montdory appeared and began to act his
part as usual; Bergerac shouted to him from the middle of the pit,
with threats if he did not leave, and for fear of worse Montdory
retired."[15]
The year 1645 in several respects opens a new phase in Cyrano's
life. His mother was dead, he began to suffer from poverty—due to
gambling it is said—and contracted a disease. There is a mystery
about the death of Cyrano de Bergerac and the "maladie" which
preceded it. M. Lachèvre has discovered a document showing the
payment of four hundred livres to a barber-chirurgeon by Cyrano
and, from circumstantial evidence we need not repeat, M. Lachèvre
asserts that this was venereal disease. If so, the moral philosopher
created by Le Bret disappears as completely as the delicate lover
invented by Rostand.
It is a remarkable fact that Cyrano did not make a serious
appearance in print until the year before his death, 1654. He wrote
earlier and published prefaces and commendatory poems; he
scribbled a few pamphlets and libels during the Fronde; but his
reputation as a writer during his lifetime must have been based on
the circulation of his writings in manuscript. The letters were not
published until 1654, but they must have been written much earlier;
The Pedant Outwitted does not seem to have been played, and The
Voyage to the Moon was circulated in manuscript for some years
before it was published.
The fact is we know very little about the last ten years of Cyrano's
life. Abel de Cyrano died in January 1648 and the poet's share of the
inheritance rescued him at least for a time from the poverty into
which he had fallen. In February 1649 there appeared an anti-
Mazarin pamphlet in verse, entitled Le Ministre d'Etat Flambé, signed
D. B. This was followed by several prose pamphlets directed against
Mazarin: Le Gazetier des Interressé, La Sybille Moderne ou l'Oracle
du Temps, Le Conseiller fidèle. Some have denied that these were
Cyrano's work; others are convinced to the contrary. If he did write
them he soon changed his political opinions; for in 1651 he
published his pro-Mazarin Contre les Frondeurs. One biographer
thinks Cyrano was bribed by Mazarin to change his politics; another
biographer thinks that since Cyrano undoubtedly wrote for Mazarin
he could never have written against him.
There is a legend that about this time Cyrano visited England, but
there is no confirmation of this.
Hitherto Cyrano had been too independent to enter the service of
any nobleman. We have noticed his refusal of the offers made him
by Marshal Gassion. Subjection to the whims of some wealthy
person of note was a misery endured by many authors of the 17th
century; Cyrano de Bergerac avoided it as long as he could, but
about the end of 1652 he entered the service of the duc d'Arpajon.
Saint-Simon in his usual contemptuous way calls this nobleman "Un
bonhomme"; he was a good soldier, religious, vain and probably not
very intelligent. Under his patronage Cyrano's works were printed in
two handsome quartos in 1654. They contained The Death of
Agrippina, The Pedant Outwitted, and The Letters. There was a
dedication to the duke and a charming sonnet to his daughter. The
success of these writings was considerable and their popular vogue
lasted at least half a century.
The death of Cyrano de Bergerac is surrounded with mystery. He
was only thirty-five when he died. Was this early death the result of
a disease, as M. Lachèvre asserts; or was it, as other commentators
say, the result of a blow on the head from a falling beam? If he were
hit by a piece of timber, was this an accident, or was it revenge? Had
Cyrano's very free philosophical speculations anything to do with it?
It is impossible to answer these questions definitely; each
commentator has replied to them according to his own prejudices.
The accident, if there were an accident, happened early in 1654. For
some unknown reason Cyrano was turned out of the Hôtel d'Arpajon
about this time. In June 1654 Cyrano was received into the house of
M. des Bois Clairs, with whom he remained for fourteen months until
a few days before his death. He then begged to be moved to a
house at Sannois, belonging to his cousin Pierre de Cyrano, where
he died on the 28th of July 1655. He was not buried in the convent
of the Filles de la Croix as the reference books say (this was his
brother Abel), but in the church of Sannois. He was converted to
Christianity on his death-bed, presumably by his sister, who was a
nun, and his friend Le Bret, the canon. A document is in existence
stating that "Savinien de Cyrano, escuier, sieur de Bergerac," died a
good Christian; it is dated the 28th of July 1655, and signed by the
parish priest, who owned the curious name of Cochon. That Cyrano,
like most of his contemporaries, yielded to a death-bed repentance
is probably true; it is equally true that he spent most of his life as a
free-thinker.
 III
CYRANO'S FRIENDS
Among Cyrano's military friends were two senior officers, M. de
Bourgogne (mestre de camp of the Prince de Conti's infantry) and
Marshal Gassion. They of course would know him simply as a brave
soldier in a company of dare-devils. More intimate soldier friends, of
a rank approaching his own, were Cavoye, brother of the celebrated
Cavoye killed at Lens; Hector de Brisailles, ensign in the Gendarmes
de Son Altesse Royale; Saint Gilles, captain in the same regiment;
Chasteaufort, whom Cyrano may have parodied in The Pedant
Outwitted. He also knew Le Bret's brother, a captain in Conti's
regiment; Duret de Montchenin and de Zeddé "braves de la plus
haute classe", and de Chavagne.
Le Bret also mentions the Comte de Brienne, M. des Billettes, M. de
Morlière.
The Comte de Brienne was the son of Louis XIII's minister; he was a
secretary of state, then an Oratorian; and he died mad. Gilles Fileau
des Billettes, brother of the Abbé de la Chaise, was "one of the most
learned men of his day." Adrien de Morlière was a famous
genealogist. Longueville-Gontier, also mentioned by Le Bret, was a
"Conseiller au Parlement". Cyrano appears to have been friendly with
the translator, Michel de Marolles, who has recorded in his Mémoires
the fact that Cyrano sent him copies of The Death of Agrippina and
The Voyage to the Moon.
After these respectable gentlemen we come to a more varied group
of Cyrano's friends, most of whom are not mentioned by Le Bret, but
who interest us more. Some of them were perhaps picked up in
taverns; others he met in the course of his studies; others were
congenial men of letters.
Three especially influenced Cyrano in his serious studies, particularly
in philosophy and physics, and confirmed his natural tendency
towards rationalism and scepticism by furnishing him with the
knowledge and arguments he lacked. Chief among these was the
celebrated Gassendi, who was born in 1592 and died in the same
year as Cyrano, 1655. Gassendi was trained as an Aristotelian, but
drew away from the school and followed with special interest the
researches of Galileo and Kepler. He opposed Descartes. He is
principally remembered for his revival of Epicurus, of the Epicurean
physics and morals, and of Lucretius. Three translations of Lucretius
were made as a result of his influence, one by Molière, one by
Chapelle, one by Dehénault (all three friends of Cyrano) and,
remarkably enough, all three of these translations have disappeared.
Gassendi exerted a considerable influence over all the intellectual
freethinkers of his age, and Cyrano de Bergerac was especially
indebted to him. Gassendi's exposition of the Epicurean theory of
atoms, his own ideas about "calor vitalis" and "anima mundi", will be
found freely copied in The Voyages; while Gassendi's favourite
principle "nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu" made a
deep impression upon Cyrano's mind.
Gassendi's lessons in physics were supported in Cyrano's memory by
his friendship with Jacques Rohault (1620-75). Rohault was a
mathematician, a pupil of Gassendi, but strongly influenced by
Descartes. He wrote a treatise on physics which has so much in
common with the fragments of Cyrano's treatise and the ideas
expressed in The Voyages that at one time Rohault was supposed to
have plagiarised from Cyrano. It is now almost conclusively proved
that the opposite is true.
It is difficult to say what relations Cyrano had with the elder La
Mothe Le Vayer (1583-1672). We know that he met his son at
Gassendi's lectures. Old Le Vayer was a famous sceptic and in many
ways a remarkable personality. Like many sceptics he lived to be
immensely old, was highly respected for his erudition and, though he
never seems to have been worried by the clergy, was the reverse of
orthodox. His position in 17th-century Paris is interesting; he was